One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."

Saturday, January 10, 2015

The U.S. military industrial complex has been spending our money faster than it can be printed while Congress saves money by paring Social Security and lowering minimum wages of those who can still find jobs. Now here is irrefutable proof that the defense contractors who gladly accept trillions of tax-payers dollars produce the most expensive fighter planes in the world ...that will be sitting ducks if ever in combat with modern Russian fighters. As Pogo once said: "We have met the enemy and they are us."

The Latest Russian Fighter Jet Blows America's Away

Outgunned by the Su-30 family of aircraft and
suffering critical design flaws, the American F-35 is staring down the
barrel of obsolescence – and punching a gaping hole in western air defenses.

This article is
an excellent read to understand how Russia's technological level is
best in its class in many military sectors, especially with regard to
fighter jets. It originally appeared in Russia & India Report. The SU-30 continues to be the number one choice among global buyers.

Built
to be the deadliest hunter killer aircraft of all time, the F-35 has
quite literally become the hunted. In every scenario that the F-35 has
been wargamed against Su-30 Flankers, the Russian aircraft have emerged
winners. America’s newest stealth aircraft – costing $191 million per
unit – is riddled with such critical design flaws that it’s likely to
get blown away in a shootout with the super-maneuverable Sukhois.

Stubby
wings (that reduce lift and maneuverability), a bulbous fuselage (that
makes it less aerodynamic) low speed and a super hot engine (which a
half decent radar can identify) are just a few of the major flaws that
will expose its vulnerability during air combat.

With
more than 600 Flankers (Sukhoi-27s and its later iterations such as the
Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 Super Flanker) flying with air forces around the
world, the fate of the fifth generation F-35 seems decidedly uncertain.
Aerospace experts across the world are veering around to the view that
America’s most expensive fighter development program (pegged at $1.5
trillion) will be a sitting duck for the flankers.

“It’s a turkey,” declares aerospace engineer Pierre Sprey in an interview to Dutch television. Few
people are as qualified to speak about fighter aircraft as Sprey. He is
the co-designer of the F-16 Falcon jet and the A-10 Warthog tank
buster, two of the most successful aircraft in the US Air Force (USAF).

Winslow
T. Wheeler, Director of the US’ Straus Military Reform Project, Centre
for Defense information, agrees. “The F-35 is too heavy and sluggish to
be successful as a fighter,” he says. “If we ever face an enemy with a
serious air force we will be in deep trouble.”

So
far the US has been lucky it has never really encountered a “serious”
military. Over the skies of war-weary Iraq, tiny Libya and utterly
defenseless Afghanistan, the American aircraft operated with impunity.
But luck can run out – if they ever come up against the air forces of
Russia, China or India the outcome won’t be so one-sided. In particular,
the Indian Air Force has beaten the USAF’s fourth generation fighters
using both third and fourth generation jets.

The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are
betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of
speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is
cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.

Plus, Russia’s already excellent radars are getting better. Says Defense Industry Daily (DID): “Meanwhile, key radar advances are already deployed in the most advanced Russian surface-to-air missile systems, and existing IRST (infra-red scan and track) systems deployed on advanced Russian and European fighters are extending enemy detection ranges against radar-stealthy aircraft. Fighter radar pick-up capability of up to (46km) by 2020 is proposed against even ultra-stealthy aircraft like the F-22, coupled with IRST ability to identify Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile firings and less infrared-stealthy aircraft at (92km) or more.”At the same time, there is no such thing as one radar in a war. “There are lots of radars,” Sprey explains. “And you can’t be nose-on or dead-level to every radar in the theater. There are always going to be radars that are going to be shining up (from below) or looking from above – they can all see you.”Short on firepowerAnother issue is with the American aircraft’s overall shape. “Most great airplanes are beautiful because you are trying to reduce drag,” Sprey says. “But here because of stealth they had to make it very bulbous, very big as they had to carry the weapons inside because as soon as you carry the weapons outside they reflect radar. So this is a huge penalty to the performance of the aircraft which is now big and lumbering like a bomber.”Lower internal payload means the designers at Lockheed-Martin have signed the F-35’s death warrant. The aircraft carries just two large bombs and four small ones, and a maximum of four beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missiles (AAMs).The USAF claims the F-35’s advanced radar will see the enemy aircraft first and be able to take it out with one of its four long-range AAMs. But BVR kills are still the stuff of dreams for fighter pilots and are quite rare.In fact, the reliance on the radar acquisition and AAMS can prove suicidal – as indeed it was once upon a time. During the Vietnam War the USAF was so smitten with the concept of BVR combat that the first F-4 fighters were armed only with missiles. But after the Vietnamese Air Force pilots shot them down by the bucket load, the Americans reintroduced cannons in the F-4.In fact, Russia, which has the most advanced and varied range of BVR missiles in the world, arms its Flankers with at least eight missiles for the simple reason that it takes several shots at a fast moving target to score a kill.That the Americans ignored this basic lesson of air combat is mind boggling.
The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.Plus, Russia’s already excellent radars are getting better. Says Defense Industry Daily (DID): “Meanwhile, key radar advances are already deployed in the most advanced Russian surface-to-air missile systems, and existing IRST (infra-red scan and track) systems deployed on advanced Russian and European fighters are extending enemy detection ranges against radar-stealthy aircraft. Fighter radar pick-up capability of up to (46km) by 2020 is proposed against even ultra-stealthy aircraft like the F-22, coupled with IRST ability to identify Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile firings and less infrared-stealthy aircraft at (92km) or more.”At the same time, there is no such thing as one radar in a war. “There are lots of radars,” Sprey explains. “And you can’t be nose-on or dead-level to every radar in the theater. There are always going to be radars that are going to be shining up (from below) or looking from above – they can all see you.”

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About Me

B.S. in Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1960 Ph.D. in Physics, Brown University, 1966. Fellow, American Physical
Society. Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fellow, American Ceramic Society. Member, Geological Society of America, Research Physicist at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Washington, DC,
1967-2001. Fulbright-García Robles Fellow at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1997. Invited Professor of Research at Universités
de Paris-6 & 7, Lyon-1, et St-Etienne (France) and Tokyo Institute
of Technology, 2000-2004. Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering, University of Arizona, 2004-2005. Consultancy: impactGlass
research international, 2005-present.
Winner, one national and two international research awards and honored
by Brown University with a "Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus
Award." Author, 198 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books, Principal Author of 114 of these.